


From the Ashes

by WonkyWarmaiden



Series: The Bad Old Days [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Blind Soldier: 76, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-16
Updated: 2016-07-16
Packaged: 2018-07-24 10:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7505098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WonkyWarmaiden/pseuds/WonkyWarmaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack wakes up in the dark and wonders where everything went wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Ashes

Jack wakes to darkness and the beeping of hospital equipment. He tries to sit up and jumps when a hand lands on his bare shoulder.

“Easy, Jack,” Angela says as she helps him prop up with a pillow at his back.

His whole body feels like one big bruise. “Ange, what’s going on? What happened?” Jack asks.

He doesn’t like this. Why is it so dark in here? Angela would never have the lights out while she was with a patient.

“It was Gabriel,” Angela says after a pause and all of Jack’s jumbled thoughts immediately snap back into order.

**********

They’re arguing in Winston’s lab at HQ. Their bickering is so loud that Winston had excused himself and stepped out to retrieve some piece of tech he probably didn’t need. Gabe starts saying that he should be the one running Overwatch and claims Jack doesn’t know what he’s doing, a sentiment he has been expressing a lot recently, and Jack grits his teeth and snarls the meanest, dumbest thing he can think of.

“Accept it, Reyes, a psychopath like you isn’t someone the higher-ups are willing to put as the head of Overwatch. Run back to your group of misfits and make sure they’re not chewing on the furniture,” Jack seethes spitefully.

In the silence that follows Jack regrets ever letting the words leave his mouth.

Jack closes his eyes and berates himself. “Gabe, I’m sorry, I didn’t--”

The shotgun blast from close range sends Jack tumbling backwards over a console. As he rolls and lands in a crouch he’s thankful he hasn’t removed his body armor for the day.

“Gabe, what the fuck!?” Jack yells at him as black tendrils of realization and betrayal at what Gabe just tried to do wrap around his heart. He chances a look over the console at Gabe and finds a steely gaze filled with anger and hatred leveled on him.

Another shot shatters a large glass beaker next to Jack and he flinches back as several shards slice their way across his face. He stumbles back and lands against a large canister of some experimental gas Winston had been showing them earlier. Jack looks up to see Gabe aiming both shotguns at him and in that moment he remembers the warning sticker on the side of the canister.

“Reyes, don’t!” Jack yells but Gabe pulls the trigger.

Jack rolls ands dives behind another console, feeling some of the shotgun blast catch in his armor as he goes. He looks up just in time to see Gabe realize his mistake and then the canister explodes, sending Gabe flying back into the wall by the door. All the bits and bobs Winston keeps sitting around in his lab go flying as well. Something hits Jack in the back of the head hard enough to make him see stars.

When some of the smoke clears Jack sits up with a groan to stare in horror at the lab around him. A chunk of the outer wall is missing, allowing bright sunlight to pour into the room. The walls and ceiling are on fire and in places are already burning through to the next room or floor. Whatever that canister was filled with burns fast. Jack can hear hurried voices out in the hall but when he turns to call for help he sees that the door is blocked by a large chunk of concrete that already fell from the floor above. There’s no way they’d hear him through that.

Beside the ruined door Gabe is starting to come to.

Jack stands and immediately has to sit back down. His hand goes to the back of his head and when he pulls it back it’s covered in red. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe through the sick feeling in his stomach and the ringing in his ears that comes with a concussion. Jack opens his eyes just in time for Gabe’s fist to connect with his cheekbone and he goes sprawling back onto the floor, head banging off the side of the console he was propped up against.

“Why won’t you just die!?” Gabe snarls down at Jack, teeth bared in fury.

Jack gasps as Gabe gets a hand around his throat and starts slamming Jack’s head into the ground over and over until Jack’s vision starts to go dark and blurry at the edges. 

An ominous cracking sounds above them and Jack looks past Gabe to see the ceiling start to give way. He tries to push Gabe off, to warn him but Gabe backhands him across the face. As Jack reels from the slap and starts to black out, the ceiling finally gives and concrete and steel rains down onto both of them. 

**********

“We had to dig the two of you out of the rubble. It took us almost two days to get to you. When we found you Gabriel was already dead, he took the worst of the debris,” Angela explains quietly.

Her voice brings him back to the present and Jack swallows hard at the news of Gabe’s death. “Ange, why can’t I see anything?” he asks.

He hears her sigh. “Between the explosion and your fight with Gabriel your brain was severely injured. With how much damage you received, and how long it took for me to be able to heal you, it had a... lasting effect.”

“What sort of effect?” Jack asks but he can already guess.

“Blindness, likely permanent,” Angela says sadly.

Jack nods dumbly. He’s not sure how to react to any of this news so he just lets Angela help him lay back down.

“Try and get some sleep, Jack,” she says and he hears her flick off the lights as she exits the room.

Jack doesn’t know how she thinks he can possibly go to sleep after everything he’s just learned. His best friend, no Gabe had always been more than that, had tried to kill him and in the process had ended up dead himself. Jack thinks back to the seething hatred he had seen simmering in Gabe’s eyes as he tried to beat the life out of Jack.

Jack shivers and tries to wipe the image away but he can’t. It was the last glimpse of Gabe he ever saw and he feels it like a brand, like Gabe seared it into his brain himself to remind Jack how badly they had both fucked up.

They’d stopped talking to each other a few months back and had barely seen one another since. Gabe had cited his work with Blackwatch as the reason and Jack had believed him, he’d been swamped with Overwatch missions and complaints himself. The weeks leading up to their radio silence had been cold. When they slept together Gabe would usually get up and leave right after, muttering something about filing reports or going over mission plans with his team. Jack had noticed but he thought it was stress or, at worst, that Gabe was losing interest in their relationship. 

Jack huffs out a humorless laugh into the quiet of his room. Gabe had lost interest but it wasn’t just their relationship he no longer cared about. Jack touches lightly at the back of his head and winces when he feels the bruises there. Gabe had wanted Jack dead and gone so badly that he had ignored an entire building collapsing around them.

Jack had heard about corruption in the ranks of Blackwatch, hell he’d heard about corruption in Overwatch itself, but he’d figured Gabe would handle it or come to Jack if he needed help. It had never occurred to Jack that maybe Gabe wasn’t as clean as Jack wanted to think. McCree leaving should have tipped Jack off that something was wrong in the depths of Blackwatch, the gunslinger had always been Gabe’s right hand man so if something caused him to leave it was serious.

He plays back the look of pure death that had taken over Gabe by the end there and Jack feels like he can’t breathe, like Gabe’s holding him by the throat again.

Jack curls up in the bed and sucks in calming breaths. Tomorrow. He can think about everything else tomorrow. For right now he’ll mourn the man he loved and who he thought loved him back. 

THE END


End file.
